


Breakfast Confidential.

by VictoryCandescence



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Bendy definitions of the concept of Love, Bit of Fluff, Everyone loves John Watson, Friendship, Gen, Multi, Pre-OT3, Semi-requited Love, The usual., Unrequited Love, bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 21:28:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VictoryCandescence/pseuds/VictoryCandescence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and Mary get to know one another a little bit better via a particular shared interest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakfast Confidential.

**Author's Note:**

> In before Series 3 retcons all my Mary head canons. This (and similar ideas) have been rattling around in my docs for a good long while. Dedicated to [thetimemoves](http://thetimemoves.tumblr.com), to whom I'd promised a Sherlock fic for the AO3Auction forever ago. (I have another coming, hopefully soon, as interest.) Thank you!

“Oh,” Mary said softly, pausing briefly at the hall door. “Good morning, Sherlock.”

He was sitting at the kitchen table finishing filing away the data for the case they solved last night. It was notable – not only for its novelty, but because Mary had actually come along. It had started a bit dull, but still proved a puzzle: Sherlock couldn’t figure out how such large and complex confidential data sets were being transmitted perfectly; he’d initially thought the thief was some kind of eidetic savant. Mary was the one to realise the thief was storing hard copies of all the sensitive data rolled up inside her tampon applicators. She’d commented on the damage to them idly, just an errant observation after viewing the contents of a forgotten handbag, but it turned out to be incredibly illuminating. 

John had called her brilliant. At any other time, Sherlock would have rolled his eyes, as he was wont to do. This time, however, John was perfectly within his rights to praise her. Sherlock wouldn’t say as much, but he was a bit impressed with her as well.

Still, when John’s back was turned talking to Lestrade later that evening, he’d caught her eye and winked, taking pleasure in how shocked she looked at such a rare display of playfulness from him.

It was late when they’d been released after statements, so they all shared a cab back to Baker Street, which was closest. John’s old bedroom was still vacant; once in a while Sherlock would go up there to think, laying on the pillowless bed. It really was much quieter, and if anyone asked why he spent time up there, that’s exactly the reason he’d give them. 

John must still be up there now, spread out under the sheets, sleeping, breathing, leaving behind evidence of his recent inhabitance for Sherlock to find later, when he was alone again.

Mary was rummaging in the refrigerator. From the corner of his eye, Sherlock observed her. She was wearing just her camisole and a pair of John’s boxer shorts – not the ones he was wearing yesterday, but one of the two spare pairs Sherlock knew John had left in his now mostly-empty wardrobe. There were three bags on one of the middle shelves of the fridge containing human elbow joints, but Mary was either still too sleepy to notice what they were or else she did notice and simply didn’t care. In any case, she came away with an egg in one hand and a carton of milk in the other. (The milk must’ve been Mrs. Hudson’s doing.)

She walked around behind Sherlock and opened a cupboard, pulling out a small saucepan. Sherlock had used it to render human fat once, a long time ago. Presumably it had been cleaned in the interim. Well. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

“I’m not bothering you, am I?” she asked, voice still raspy with sleep.

Sherlock took it as an opportunity to look up at her properly.

Here, in the morning kitchen light of 221B, she looked like a watercolor version of herself, all soft lines and blurry colours. Sherlock had only really seen her previously before or after dates with John, or else when she had come from work. All these times her clothes, like most women’s, were thoughtfully curated, her makeup carefully applied – if a little smudged from the normal wear of the day. Always alert and pleasant, especially in John’s company. Always ready with a witty riposte if Sherlock bared his customary rudeness. Now, moving slowly and quietly as she filled the kettle and the saucepan, bare feet sticking to the lino, straw-coloured hair haphazardly tucked behind her ears, she was a new and different version of herself.

Sherlock knew this – the private morning version only those who woke up in the same vicinity ever got to see – was the Mary John had fallen in love with. 

Because that was the version of John he’d fallen in love with.

“No,” he said. “You’re surprisingly unobtrusive.”

She smiled at him. Her eyes were puffy and the skin around her mouth was a little red. A fading crease on her cheek told Sherlock she’d used John’s shoulder as a pillow last night.

“Tea?” she asked, hand in the cupboard. Sherlock wondered how she knew the flat so well, why she felt like she belonged here as much as he or John did. She should feel like an interloper, a speck on the lens, shrapnel beneath his skin. Somehow she wasn’t.

“Yes, please,” he heard himself say.

She pulled down two mugs, dropped tea bags in.

“Isn’t John coming down?” Sherlock asked, noticing the absence of a third.

“He’s off today; I figured I’d let him have a lie in, especially after last night.” She set the saucepan on the hob of the stove, dropped the egg in. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Not yet.”

“Still too excited, eh?”

Sherlock had expected a Watson-esque tutting over his poor sleeping practices. Another surprise. She had to stop doing that or he’d start to be actively fond of her.

“I had some cataloguing to finish,” he said, realising as he did that since she’d come into the kitchen he’d completely ignored his files. He went back to them now, hastily shoving sheaves of paper into folders and stacking them, then moving them into the sitting room to the box near the scanner.

Mary had poured the tea and set the two cups on the table, milk and sugar between them. She took a seat opposite the one Sherlock had just vacated, hunching in her shoulders and cupping her hands around the steaming mug.

Sherlock looked around. Draped over the back of John’s chair (and it would always be John’s chair, even if he didn’t actually live here anymore) was his tartan dressing gown. Sherlock snapped it up and walked back into the kitchen. He stopped next to her chair and held it out.

“Here,” he said.

Mary looked up. “What?”

Sherlock brandished the dressing gown. “You’re cold.”

“Oh,” said Mary, then with the same shocked look the wink had garnished from her last night, “Oh! Thank you.” She got up and took it from Sherlock, slipping it on and tying it around her waist. It was rather large on her, almost comically so. She didn’t wear it like the Woman had worn his blue one, with a subversive kind of grace. It was more like the dressing gown was wearing Mary, but she drew the shawl of it up close to her neck with a comfortable-sounding sigh, settling down in her seat once more. Sherlock sat across from her and measured milk into his tea.

“You’re being awfully nice to me this morning,” she said after a few minutes of silence.

Sherlock hummed noncommittally into his mug. He fiddled with the knob on his microscope, didn’t meet her eyes.

“You should tell him,” Sherlock said.

“I know, but I’m afraid he’ll turn me in,” Mary said with mock graveness.

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed in annoyance. 

“Don’t make jokes,” he said tartly. “You’re terrible at it.”

“You’re even worse at taking them,” she said. Her eyes were much brighter now, her smile more playful than sleepy. “Tell him what?”

Sherlock took a pointed sip of his tea and considered not speaking anymore. But Mary was sitting across from him, elbows on the table and nose in her cup, being swallowed by his dressing gown and looking at him like John looked at him. Open and patient, and lovingly exasperated.

“To shave the damn thing off,” Sherlock said, deciding that the chance of seeing her insulted on behalf of John was more interesting than ignoring her in a fit of petulance. “I don’t know why you let it off for so long.”

“I like it!” she said, thumping her cup. 

“Aesthetics versus tactility. You like the way it _looks_ on him. You don’t like the way it feels when he kisses you.”

Mary’s theatrical outrage pulled back into a more genuine rueful smile.

“True enough,” she confessed. “But it’s his face, he can do what he wants with it.”

“Including inflicting a rash on yours every time he leans in for a snog?”

Mary’s fingers brushed over her upper lip, which was still a bit pink. “Is it that bad?” she asked, then her eyes narrowed at him. 

“What?” Sherlock asked sharply.

Mary just smiled again, but this time it was a lopsided curl of her lip that Sherlock knew usually preceded cheekiness or the almost-always erroneous assumption that someone thought they knew something he didn’t. 

“ _You_ don’t like it.”

Sherlock kept his face blank. Damn her – weren’t normal people supposed to be slower on the uptake in the morning?

“Come on, don’t expect me to believe you give a single toss about my complexion. You want me to tell him to get rid of it because you don’t want to.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock bit out.

But Mary was still smiling that infuriatingly haughty smile, like she’d won something.

“Why?” she asked.

Sherlock didn’t answer. Instead he got up and went over to the stove to turn down the water the egg was boiling in so that it wouldn’t overcook.

“There must be a reason. You wouldn’t waste your time having me on about it.”

Sherlock didn’t turn around. He stacked a few petri dishes, swept some toast crumbs into the basin of the sink, mopped up a puddle of water from beneath a thawing cow brain with a tea towel.

“All right,” Mary conceded. “Nevermind. I’ll just pretend you didn’t mention it –”

“He won’t listen to me.”

Sherlock gripped the edge of the worktop and bit his lip, internally cursing his impulsiveness. The way in which he’d said the words was much too ardent to be dismissed as an idle conjecture. Sherlock took a deep breath, and for some reason it shook loose a torrent of thoughts that he could no longer stopper from coming out.

“It’s a stupid thing. It is. But its – it’s a reminder of how long I was gone and how much he changed and I can’t avoid seeing it everytime I look at him. And if I did say anything at all about it he’d certainly dismiss me as ridiculous or peevish or overbearing and I can’t. I can’t have that, not when things have been so hatefully tentative between us. I – I never really talked to him of personal matters before but I feel like I’ve stayed so silent so long that I’ve lost my opportunity to ever tell him anything. But why _now?_ Why now do I feel like unsaid words are eating away at me from the inside like a cancer? And why the bloody fuck am I even saying any of this to _you?”_  

Sherlock, who had still been holding the sodden tea towel and twisting it in his hands, angrily balled it up and threw it at the window where it hit the glass with a disappointing damp _thwump_ and dropped to the floor. Mary blinked, relatively unphased. Then she took a long, slow sip of her tea and set the mug down deliberately and with care on the table in front of her.

“Because I don’t think we’re talking about the moustache any longer, are we,” she said.

Sherlock leaned against the counter and ran his fingers compulsively through his hair.

“I probably need sleep,” he said, his tone completely flat. He went round the table to retreat down the hall to his room but Mary was up and out of her seat like a shot, blocking his way. He didn’t wish to touch her or be touched by her, so he was, regrettably, stymied.

 “Look,” she said, and her voice wasn’t calm, nor was it charged with anger. It was firm, like a teacher, the ones Sherlock never had who just wanted to understand their students so as to make their students understand. “You don’t have to like me. You just have to realize that I love him as much as you do.”

Sherlock walked the opposite way round the table into the sitting room and dropped himself into his chair instead.

“That’s just the thing,” he said. “I do like you.”

Mary let out a little surprised huff of laughter. “Really?” she said, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

Sherlock nodded, sure his face looked miserable. “You’re good for him. Best match I’ve seen, and let me tell you, he’s brought round _droves_ of women before who –”

“All right, then,” Mary said. “Moving on.”

Sherlock cleared his throat. “Right. The point is he needs you as much as he needed me. And I – it’s a difficult realisation to have come to.”

“For someone as narcissistic as yourself,” said Mary.

“You’re infuriating,” Sherlock said. 

“Now you know how I feel when I talk to you,” she answered. She came into the sitting room now as well, and sat across from Sherlock in John’s chair. It fit around her well, and it was as annoying to Sherlock as it was somehow, strangely, a relief.

“He still needs you,” she said, softer. “Always will, I reckon. It’s all right to say you need him too.”

“I don’t,” Sherlock said.

“You do.”

“Your egg’s probably gone all green around the yolk by now,” Sherlock said.

“Sod the egg. I want a proper breakfast. Fancy a fry up?”

Sherlock paused. Made a decision.

“I know a place, not too far,” he said. “Should just be opening now. John and I used to go there rather often; he says they make the best sausages.”

Mary, too, seemed to make a decision before she spoke. “I’ll only be a minute,” she said, and disappeared upstairs. Sherlock took the time to slip on his coat, scarf and shoes, and they were off.

 

\---

 

“Don’t you feel odd leaving John alone?” Sherlock said, when they’d walked a few minutes or so in silence up Baker Street toward Marylebone.

“I don’t need to be with him every moment,” she said. “Besides, I told him I was popping out and I doubt he even woke up enough to register. He’ll be grateful for the extra sleep.”

Sherlock looked down at Mary. She looked sharper now, out here in the brisk autumn morning. She was taking in the surroundings; the quiet of the street and the calm of those few who were up and about.

“Does he still do that annoying snuffling thing when he wakes up?” Sherlock asked.

Mary laughed, shot him a sideways look. “How do you know about the snuffling thing?”

“God, I’ve woken him up more times than he’s roused himself. You’d think those military types would be keen on early rising.”

Mary laughed harder now and it was a ridiculous sound, far too loud for the hour, but she hardly seemed to notice or care.

“True. So has he always been so anal about food expiry dates, or was that something you helped bring about?”

Something in Sherlock’s shoulders loosened. “I’d say it’s likely a draw. He used to dump the milk right on the date even though I assured him it would still be good up to three days after, so I did some experimentation with lactic acids to prove a point. It, er, may or may not have got away from me a bit. I heard it for two weeks. And yet he still complained that I never brought home milk, even when I knew he wouldn’t drink it if I did.”

“It’s the _principle_ of the thing, Sherlock!” Mary said, in an almost exact John-like inflection. Sherlock chuckled, felt the weight inside him lessen just a bit more.

 

\---

 

They got to the cafe and Mary ordered her breakfast. Sherlock ordered coffee only, and was distinctly relieved at the lack of protest in the face of his austerity.

“Are you sure?” was all Mary said.

“I always am.”

Sherlock ripped open his packets of sugar one by one and dumped them into his coffee. Mary squished her spoon into her spent tea bag. The silence was full, but it wasn’t anxious or awkward, to Sherlock’s surprise. 

“It occurs to me,” she said after a time, “That I hardly know anything about you.”

“You’ve read the blog,” Sherlock said. “And the papers. And seen the bloody news cycles when I came back.”

“Yeah, but that’s not you for real,” she said.

The words hit something inside Sherlock that made a pang of regret run through him. He decided to ask a question that he’d been wondering about, but didn’t know if he wanted to hear the answer.

“Didn’t John tell you anything about me when I was gone?”

Mary squished her tea bag once more before setting her spoon down, straightening the handle so that it was perpendicular to the edge of the table. 

“Not really. No. I – sort of had to put the pieces together myself.”

Sherlock’s heart felt a bit tighter then.

“Just because he didn’t talk about you,” Mary said carefully, “Doesn’t mean he didn’t think about you. In fact, I think it means he thought about you very often.”

Sherlock stayed silent, staring down into the black of his coffee trying to keep his face perfectly passive. Suddenly, he felt cold fingers come to rest over his knuckles. His hand twitched, but he did not pull away.

“I know why you did what you did. So does he,” said Mary. “And even if he told me everything, I’d still want to hear it all from you. Make up my own mind. John is a notoriously unreliable narrator.”

“Especially when it comes to me,” Sherlock said. He gathered his wits and looked up. The look on Mary’s face was not anything as syrupy as sympathy, to his relief. It was harder than that, more curious and searching. Expectant.

“I noticed before that you seem to define the word ‘love’ in quite an atypical fashion,” Sherlock said.

“We are atypical people, Sherlock. I think we should be allowed to bend the definition any way we would like.”

Sherlock’s mouth twitched up.

“I think you already know the beginning and the end of me,” Sherlock said.

Mary smiled. “And what’s that?”

“That I love John Watson.”

Mary’s smile only grew larger. Sherlock was sufficiently gobsmacked; he could only hope it wasn’t showing on his face – though he suspected he was failing.

“Well,” said Mary. “Tell me the middle then.”

 

\---

 

When they got back to Baker Street, it was not even yet nine. John was finally up, though, shuffling around the kitchen. Sherlock liked the familiar sight very much indeed.

“Hello there,” he said when they came in. “Where have you two been off to?”

“Breakfast,” said Mary. She took off her coat and curled herself up again in John’s chair.

“Well bully for you,” John said, somewhat grumpily, crossing the sitting room to sit at the desk with his tea. “Is that lonely hard-boiled egg all that’s left for me then?”

“You have so little faith in us, doctor,” Sherlock said, and set down a bag in front of John holding a takeaway container full of still-steaming eggs, sausages and grilled tomatoes. John sighed gratefully and tucked in straightaway.

“So what’s this then?” John asked as he ate. “You two’ve never gone anywhere together before.”

“We were plotting your untimely demise,” Sherlock deadpanned.

“Don’t joke,” John chuckled. “That’s the first place my mind went.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Mary chided. “He’s obviously only trying to steal me away from you.”

“And that was the second,” John said, his eyebrows knitting together in a pastiche of sternness as he looked at Mary. She pressed her lips together and looked heavenward, exaggerating innocence.

“That would be the day, wouldn’t it?” Sherlock said. John smiled into his teacup. 

“So you were just chatting it up then, hm?” John asked. 

“Yes,” answered Sherlock. “We came to the conclusion that you need to shave off that damn moustache.”

Sherlock had only seen John’s eyes go wider when he’d strode into the flat covered in pig’s blood.

“My moustache? Wha – why?”

“You look more like yourself without it,” Sherlock said, before he lost his nerve. “And you’ve been giving Mary snog-rash.”

Sherlock was secretly delighted at the numerous different flavors of shock John’s face could make in succession. He was even more delighted when the one it settled on wasn’t affront, but the sort of sparking challenge John showed when he wanted to prove himself. 

“So you _have_ been plotting against me!” he said. “Is this true? Et tu, Mary?”

Mary just shrugged up her shoulders and covered her face with her hands, her eyes sparkling as she peeked out from between her fingers, trying to stave off her laughter.

“Fine,” John said. “I see how it is.”

He stood up sharply, and with militant determination marched with squared shoulders and balled fists straight into the loo.

Ten minutes later, he came out, his face damp and soft and smooth – and the moustache was gone. Here was the John Watson he remembered. Sherlock pounced to his feet.

“Ah,” he said, holding his hands up. Then before he could think too much on it, he reached out and ran his thumb across John’s bare upper lip, letting his hand briefly linger at the side of his face before dropping it away again. To John’s credit, he didn’t even flinch. He just looked up at Sherlock and smiled, mischievously. Sherlock’s heart thumped inside him.

“So,” John said, sliding his eyes away from Sherlock’s and finding Mary’s. “What do you think?”

Mary got up and went over to where they stood.

“You look different,” she said. “It’ll take some getting used to.”

“Think you can bear it?”

Mary smiled at him, then leaned in and gave him a long, lingering kiss, letting her own lips brush over his newly smoothed skin.

“I think so,” she said, when she finally pulled away. “If you can.”

John looked slightly dazed. “Oh – yeah. Yes. Definitely.”

Then Mary turned around to Sherlock, looked up at him, and winked.

The smile it made Sherlock display came all the way from the warm knot in the middle of his chest. 

It wasn’t the same. It never would be. 

But sameness is _boring_ – and he’d never want that.

At that moment, what he knew for certain was that 221B felt like home again for the first time in a long while. Something new was happening here. When they left, he would be alone again, but perhaps not as lonely as he felt before. 

 

\---

 

When John finished his breakfast, he and Mary said goodbye to Sherlock with a promise to see him again soon, and hailed a cab to take them back to their own flat.

“That was rather fun, actually,” Mary said. “I wouldn’t mind accompanying you two again some time.”

“I’m a lucky man,” John said. He threaded an arm around Mary’s waist and pulled her across the seat toward him. 

“Oh?” said Mary, fitting herself into his side and looking at him. “Why’s that?”

John shrugged. “Dunno really. Guess I just feel...loved.”

Mary grinned and leaned her head on his shoulder, resting one hand under his jacket, over his heart.

“More than you know, John,” she said. “More than you know.”

She felt the hum he made through his chest and had a feeling he did, in fact, know _quite_ well.


End file.
